It’s Here: $4 Gas

This morning, I woke up to a radio station that was hysterically screaming about the fact that gas prices hit $3.99(9) this a.m. “If you get out early enough,” said the radio dude, “you can still find gas for $3.75 a gallon! That will save you about $5 on a tank of gas!”

“There are lines at gas stations,” screeched the female DJ.

Yeah, so? Welcome to Memorial Day Weekend. People are idiots if they didn’t expect a spike in gas around the holiday. It happens every year, although $4 gas is obviously a record-setter here in the U.S. I suppose one might even label $4 gas a “shock to the psyche.” Yet, the Mad Money guy is predicting $6/gas by the end of summer, so we might as well get used to it.

As an environmentalist, I am theoretically on board with expensive gas because it penalizes all the morons who buy those oversized Suburban Assault Vehicles and make my commute a living hell.  It’s going to take expensive gas to force Detroit to make more fuel efficient cars. Who knows, it might even jump start an electric car revolution. The one thing it won’t do, in this spread out suburban sprawl nation of ours, is cause an investment in better public transportation. Wait – let me explain that a bit more. There might be reinvestment in the densely populated cities, or even along corridors in the East and West. But you won’t be seeing high speed rail from say, Indianapolis to Louisville any time soon. And places like the town I live in have horrible bus systems — it takes 3 buses and at least 50 minutes to get from my house to my university, which is only 10 miles away. And, given high fuel prices, they are talking about trimming down routes further.

No, I don’t feel bad about gas prices, but I do have empathy for the (truly) poor Americans who are just getting by. They are the ones who will be hurt the most when bus routes are cut. They are the ones who are going to have the worst time at the supermarket because our food distribution system is not sustainable. It is terrible to live in the farm belt, only to find that the grocery store is stocking vegetables from clear across the country! Talk about building in your transportation costs. What ever happened to eating seasonably and locally?

For a middle class American like me, the impact isn’t that drastic … yet. I only fill my car twice a month. I try to buy my groceries on the way home from work. This summer, I can work at home two days a week until mid-July. Really, right now, all we’ve done is cut back on is going out to eat, buying leisure items (like DVDs and certain “fun” reading books), and buying iced non-fat chai tea lattes at *$. Fortunately, we have been paying down credit cards (grad school debt, sick father debt, new computer debt, etc.) so there’s more leeway in our budget. Sure, we’re not taking a big fancy vacation this summer, but then I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere because I am making a shit-ton of extra money from taking on summer teaching, attending a couple of training institutes, and doing some administrative duties.

I do, however, feel bad for The Coach because he has a 100-mile daily commute and that can get pricey, even though he has a decent (by U.S. standards) car when it comes to fuel efficiency. At this time, it’s still more economically sound to stay at his high school in the Neighboring State because he makes significantly more there than he would in our Home State. Yet, we have been discussing the fact that he will probably need to stop coaching football in the near future because he doesn’t get paid enough to truly cover the cost of gas and maintenance on his car (and it would require him to drive all summer). This might be his last year. We’ll see. But, even worse, is the fact that he teaches in a relatively poor, rural school (teacher cuts, extracurricular cuts, etc) where the kids might not be able to afford to get to summer practice. And that is a shame, because we Disenchanted hate to see ass-kickings all season long.